Employee engagement and motivation are linked in a way that significantly increases productivity and performance in the workplace. Employee engagement reflects the connection that individuals feel towards their work. This then drives motivation within them to achieve and generate business results.
Ultimately, by improving one you will improve the other which leads to success for your organization. Let’s take a closer look at how to improve employee engagement and motivation amongst your team.
What Are The Key Drivers of Employee Engagement?
Give Your Employees Purpose
It’s in our human nature to require a purpose and this is evident in our job roles too. In order to give your employees more meaning, provide clearly defined roles so they feel confident in their positions. Combining this with feeling connected to the organization and providing opportunities to undertake training to support their performance will increase their self-assurance and instil their purpose.
One way you can help build that connection with your employees is by displaying employee birthdays, work social events and key internal announcements for all to see. You can also display opportunities for training for your team is by signposting a training day calendar or upcoming events they may be interested in. These notices could be on your company website, your organization’s intranet or with our digital signage technology.
Encourage Career Development
Another way in which you can increase employee engagement is by encouraging career development. This could include setting achievable targets and goals to reach, with the option to add a specific time period to reach them by. Our Employee Experience App gives employees the ability to align schedules and office attendance or location with specific colleagues to learn from other team members and develop their skill set.
Having an objective to work towards that’s personal to them gives employees passion and motivation to overcome challenges and feel a sense of accomplishment. Their talents are highlighted and utilized in a way which makes employees feel recognized and praised for which, in turn, encourages them to harness and develop them further.
Focus on Strengths & Autonomy
Focusing on an employee’s strength and giving them autonomy over their responsibilities is an effective way to boost employee engagement and motivation. This builds their own confidence in their capabilities, reinforces trust between your working relationship and is another way to give them purpose and meaning in their work. By giving them ownership over their talents, they are more likely to perform to a higher standard, ultimately contributing to company success.
Highlighting your employees’ strengths can also encourage collaboration amongst your team. If a project comes along that requires multiple skill sets, you are able to bring together a group of employees that can each contribute in their own way using their talents. This collaboration increases engagement as each individual feels confident in their abilities and this is boosted by using space management software. Make sure your desired group can easily collaborate by employing space management strategies such as neighbourhoods and office zoning.
Be a Caring Manager
To increase employee engagement, you have to show that you are engaged with them too. This is prevalent by making sure your employees see you as someone who cares about them as individuals as well as about their job performance.
One way in which you can show this is by using positive extrinsic motivators like recognizing a job well done and praising employees. This recognition will not only improve individual employee engagement but promote a positive culture of appreciation across the company.
Another way to show this would be ensuring that employees have optimum working conditions when travelling to the office. Did you know that good lighting, noise control and optimal air quality in office spaces have proven to be a key factor for employee wellness and productivity? Taking care of employees’ wellbeing has a direct impact on their performance and our PAM sensor can help you understand your office air quality.
By capturing data in the office environment like noise, light, humidity, CO2, you can create the optimum working conditions for your employees. Improve comfort levels with temperature control, boost concentration with better air quality and reduced distractions by managing noise levels.
Encourage Ongoing Conversations
Communication amongst your team is important, especially between management and employees. Regular conversations about anything, from workload to day-to-day small talk, tackling challenges together to confiding about any work issues, builds trust and strong working relationships. This significantly increases employee engagement as well as motivation as they will know they’re not alone – particularly those that work remotely.
Our SPOT integrations include Zoom, so you can easily set up regular video conferencing with your employees. When booking a meeting through the Freespace App, you can add a virtual Zoom link so you are able to have these ongoing conversations with your employees. By setting up recurring meetings, you can always make sure these are in the calendar.
These integrations also include Microsoft Suite with Teams and Outlook so employees can see their office schedule alongside their calendar and their colleagues’ calendars. This ability brings together remote and office-based employees, so there are always opportunities to connect and communicate. Plus, with the ability to book workspaces through the Teams and Outlook interface, it is easy to find the time and space for these conversations.
What Are The Different Types of Motivators?
There are 2 different types of employee motivation which are linked with the employee engagement drivers above:
Intrinsic Motivation: This type of motivation is driven by the inherent satisfaction that they will feel after a task is complete. The underlying enjoyment of their job enables them to take ownership of their work and feel a sense of pride and achievement.
Extrinsic Motivation: This type of motivation is driven by external factors that can be both positive and negative. Positive factors include bonuses, pay rises and promotions and negative factors include written warnings, poor performance reviews and an angry manager.
Negative extrinsic motivation is only effective in the short-term because although it will encourage employees to perform better, it will damage the overall morale which will consequently impact employee engagement. Positive intrinsic motivation will help you establish increased motivation levels in the long-term as it is strongly linked to building employee engagement.
As you can see, employee engagement is a great way to increase employee motivation, thereby improving productivity and business success. At Freespace, we have a number of tools to help you improve employee engagement and our Employee Experience App is dedicated to elevating the workplace experience. Contact us today to find out more.
